chapter 4

The next three days passed in a blur of silk, schedules, and suffocation.

Every hour of Elena's life was suddenly spoken for.

A dressmaker arrived at eight in the morning with three assistants and enough ivory fabric to bury a cathedral. A jeweler followed before noon carrying velvet trays of diamonds and pearls Serafina rejected with bored precision. Florists were brought into the west courtyard. Invitations were revised, resent, embossed, and approved. A priest came and went through the side entrance. Security at the estate doubled. Men Elena did not recognize stood at the gates with earpieces and guns beneath tailored jackets, and every servant in the house began moving with the fearful efficiency that meant Vittorio Moretti's temper was near the surface.

The wedding, it seemed, would not wait.

It would happen in twelve days.

Twelve.

Elena repeated the number to herself that first morning while a seamstress pinned the hem of a gown around her ankles.

Twelve days to leave the only home she had ever known.

Twelve days to marry a man who looked at her as if she were a negotiated wound.

Twelve days to become a wife in a union that had nothing to do with love.

"Stand still, signorina," the seamstress murmured, crouched at Elena's feet.

Elena forced her hands to unclench.

She stood on the raised platform in the fitting room wearing the half-finished shell of what would become her wedding dress. It was beautiful in the way expensive things often were - delicate lace, long sleeves, hand-stitched pearls trailing over the bodice like drops of milk. Serafina had chosen it that morning after dismissing four other designs with a few cool words.

"This one," she had said. "It makes her look softer."

Softer. Meeker. Easier to give away.

Bianca sat nearby in a pale yellow day dress, swinging one slippered foot while eating strawberries from a porcelain dish. She had taken to drifting in and out of the fittings as though Elena's wedding were a theatrical performance arranged for her amusement.

"I still think the neckline should be lower," Bianca said. "If one must be sacrificed to a ruthless man, one may as well look memorable."

Serafina, seated by the window, did not look up from the guest list in her lap. "A bride is not a courtesan."

Bianca popped another strawberry into her mouth. "Some brides should try harder."

Elena kept her eyes fixed on the far wall.

Under ordinary circumstances Bianca's comments might have stung, but these days they simply washed over her. Cruelty required energy to absorb, and Elena had begun to feel as though something in her was rationing what remained. She was tired in her bones. Not from labor. From dread.

"Lift your chin," Serafina said.

Elena obeyed.

The seamstress pinned a line of lace near her collarbone and stepped back. "Bellissima," she said softly, perhaps because it was expected.

Elena glanced at her own reflection.

A stranger stared back.

The dress was exquisite. Her hair had been loosely pinned to keep it out of the way, soft dark strands framing a face too pale to belong beneath bridal lace. The bodice narrowed her waist. The long skirt pooled around her in a cloud of white and cream.

For one terrible moment, her breath caught.

When she was fourteen, Elena had once hidden in the estate library with a book of royal weddings she found tucked between political memoirs. She remembered turning thick glossy pages filled with smiling brides and flower-covered aisles, pausing over veils and church bells and men who looked at their brides as though they had been waiting their whole lives for that exact moment.

She had imagined, shyly and foolishly, what her own wedding might feel like one day.

Not grand, necessarily. Just warm.

A husband who would look at her and be glad.

A mother beside her to smooth trembling hands.

A father - she had still dreamed of this then - proud to give her away because he loved her, not because she was useful.

She had imagined laughter. Music. Some small private tenderness behind the ceremony.

Not this.

Not standing beneath Serafina's appraisal while Bianca critiqued her neckline and strangers stitched her into a beautiful surrender.

The image in the mirror blurred.

Elena blinked quickly and looked down before anyone could notice.

But Serafina noticed everything.

"What now?" she asked, not sharply, just with clinical annoyance.

Elena swallowed. "Nothing."

"Then do not wilt. It is unbecoming."

The seamstress busied herself with the train, wisely mute.

Bianca leaned back in her chair, expression unreadable for once. "She looks like she might faint."

"I will not faint," Elena said quietly.